The skies this day have tried to clear, but more storms hover at the horizon’s edge. They’re likely to be neither as large nor as strong as yesterday’s, but they’re expected to deliver a little more snow al the same.
It has made for a beautiful morning, one in which blue skies and violet clouds and silvered light all dance — an intricate, seemingly random series of steps that part and meet and cross and meld and part again, ethereal movement to some haunting melody audible only to the elemental spirits.
And we live in the space of the winter spirits now: cold so sharp its blade edge slices to the bone, yet generous with the gifts of abundance, of the first medicine, water, in the form that does our small world here the greatest good.
It’s a reminder that, in our way, virtually any space is sacred space, any time or season, too. Every culture has its formalized structures and systems of ceremony, of course, but ours is one that provides space for the sacred to inhabit everything, for ceremony and medicine to be in and of the most ordinary aspects of our lives.
It’s part of what inspired today’s featured masterwork, Wings’s own complex and beautifully rendered tribute to life in the space of the spirits. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
In the Space of the Spirits Cuff Bracelet
The storm dances and the First Medicine flows in the space of the spirits. Wings summons storm and rain and sacred space together into one wide shining band of hand-wrought sterling silver. Each edge of the band is hand-scored in a single deeply stamped line to create twinned borders. Within those edges, traditional thunderhead symbols point inward in a repeating pattern from either side, each one impossibly even, each throwing the negative space into sharp relief. Down the center, thunderhead symbols were initially stamped in a conjoined pattern, creating a motif of sacred space that points to all directions, then the silver within was excised, freehand, ajouré-fashion, to create an internal band of negative space that holds the mysteries of storm and spirit. At either terminal, a flowing water pattern sends the gift of the rain to its rounded, hand-smoothed ends. Cuff measures 6″ long by 1-3/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This cuff is a personal favorite, one of the relatively few works, in fact, to make it onto my list of all-time favorites The size and shaping are classic, the freehand stampwork impossibly even and deep, the equally-freehand cutwork at once bold and delicate . . . and it’s all wrought in eminently traditional patterns that hold powerful symbolism.
It’s a work for the storm and for the water, for the spaces of ceremony and the medicine that flows from and flowers within them. And at this season, with several storms gathering low and close now, ready to deliver the medicine the land most needs, it feels like the perfect tribute to space and season, place and time.
We inhabit the space of the winter spirits, a space that holds no less than the gift of life itself.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
